 Call the meeting to order. So the first thing we do is consider our agenda. And actually, the first thing on the agenda we've already done was just for me to call the meeting to order. The second thing is an approval of the agenda. So I ask, does anyone have any changes they'd like to make to the agenda tonight? Hearing none, we'll deem it approved by consensus. So the third item on the agenda is for comments from the chair. And there's just so far to introduce Emery Richardson. So welcome, Emery. Hi. Am I pronouncing it right? Yeah. OK, phonetic. Well, I'm excited that you've joined us. Do you know how long you'll be just for the year or? I'm not really sure how it works, but as long as my schedule permits. Great, great. I tried to look at the council minutes to see what sort of term they appointed you for. And I couldn't find any evidence of it. So we'll just go on as you can make it. Yeah, I don't know how the terms work. So. And we'll introduce ourselves briefly now. And then I'm curious, after we introduce ourselves, if you can tell us why you were interested in coming in. It's not meant to be a quiz. It's just meant to kind of like what caught your eye. So we'll introduce ourselves first. You don't have to be the first one to talk, so Mike, why don't you? I'm Mike Miller. I'm the planning director for the city. And Mike is on staff with the city. And he does, he supports us in a lot of ways. So he helps us a lot with coordinating with the city council and just advising us about how the work that we do is actually playing out. And whether it's working, whether we need to make tweaks. So that's really critical. And then he has the planning expertise that not all of us have. So that's really critical, too. I'm Leslie Welts. I'm the chair at the commission. I've been part of the commission since the late 2014, August 2014, so I've been serving for a little while now. And I am an environmental attorney by day, which is how I knew your father. And I really like being able to contribute to our city. I've adopted as my home. You didn't really have a choice. But I adopted as my home. And so I've been excited to be able to give it back. And this is the way I've been doing it. I'm John Adams. I joined the planning commission at the same time that Leslie did. And my background is in urban planning and in mapping. So John's the other member that has expertise. We'll end this, too. I like that much. I'm Kirby Keaton. I've been around for two or three years now. It actually goes a lot quicker than you'd expect. And I'm a tax attorney by day. So really exciting stuff, in other words. Hi, I'm Aaron Kosicki. I've been here a few months shockingly. I'm also a lawyer. But yeah, the only three in town. Yeah. Well, four. And what kind of law would you say you practice now? Regulatory. Administrative law. I regulate professions now. So that's it. I'm Ariane Kassam. And I work at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to work on reviewing affordable housing projects for funding. Cool. I'm Emery Richardson. I'm in seventh grade at Main Street Middle School. And what interested me about this board commission thing was just knowing where Montpelier is going in the future and kind of having a say in it. But I don't really know how it works. But knowing what's going to happen and possibly having a say in it. And just helping the community and giving back. Well, that's great because you may not have noticed we don't have any other seventh graders on commission. As much as we like to think that we're young, we're not really that young anymore. So. Speak for yourself. Yeah, the oldest one here. We're talking about the tree. The tree. So it's really, I mean, don't be shy about offering your opinion and your thoughts. Because we don't have that perspective. I mean, the children that we have are much younger, too. So, yeah. Great. OK, so other comments from the chair. Next meeting, we're going to have to vote on our leadership. To do it every January, every year. And you're every year. So, Kirby and I have discussed it. And we're both happy to continue on serving as chair and vice chair. But I wanted to flag it. And if anyone else is interested in taking on a leadership role, let's talk about it. So, everybody's playing right now. Thank you for voting. No, please. No, please even making eye contact. It's so bad it is. Sounds like a plan. All right, well, we'll vote on it on the next meeting. But I just wanted to mention it in advance, so I didn't just blindside you. Maybe I'm going to do a surprise like, I think you can't. A big two. You don't know. Yeah, I'm happy. You're going to navigate every two years. Well, we'll get this tune in next week. She doesn't even open in the turnstile. Yeah, she doesn't really take it. Yeah, you know, it's a pretty good position. The other comments are that I still need to have lunch with Eric Gilbertson to hear how they're doing the Historic Preservation Commission and the Design Review Committee are moving forward with some recommendations on their rules, their rules. It's not really their rules. The parts of the zoning that would affect them. So he has reached out to me to have lunch, and I need to get back to him. So I just wanted to give you that update. And I think that's it. As far as comments from the chair, I don't have anything else, but all right. I'd just be interested to hear if you guys went to the thing on the parking garage last week. If you have any updates or info from that. Oh, yes. I did attend. It was the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission's Project Review Committee's meeting. And they had the architect from the city's architect presenting the parking garage and hotel proposal. We also had the Capitol Plaza owner present, as well as the city manager. And they sort of walked through the proposal and explained some of the finer points that all of the materials are available on the city's website. But it was just nice for me to have someone in the flesh explaining it all, because it's just easier for me to digest information. The review committee that was hosting doesn't actually participate in a formal sense. So it was really just sort of more like a courtesy for them. That's my understanding of it. You were around when it was announced, I think. Yeah, it's kind of how these subcommittees the Regional Planning Commission work is. Sometimes there's a basically percent of it coming in. It's a present question more than any other. You kind of agree with everything about that. OK, yeah. So that was interesting. And some of the big takeaway is that I got, and probably everyone already knew all of these, but sorry. Because there's going to be an increase in parking, which is the main interest that I understand the city for having in addition to, hopefully, economic injection by having people come and stay in there. And the biggest concerns that have been associated with this would be flooding, whether it's going to A, be subject to flooding that would negatively impact that infrastructure that we're planning to put there. And B, whether it would increase flooding to other infrastructure, and you buy. Because when you put fill in, you're raising it, and you move that water is going to go somewhere. So those are some of the things that were being discussed. My understanding is that the project is set for hearing before the Act 250 District Commission. And that's happening tomorrow, I think. I was going to say it's this week, I thought. Yeah, it's happening very soon. And because it's kind of designated downtown, some of the criteria are waived. It's on this sort of fast track, and one would be compliance with the town plan. So it would correct me if I've got any of this incorrect. But that's my understanding of it. There's an increase in parking. The Rivers program at ANR had some concerns about whether the first level of the hotel was high enough, whether it was. And the architect was saying, well, we'd have to redo all of the plans, and it would be very costly. So they're just sort of going to go forward with that proposal to the District Commission and see how the District Commission responds to that evidence. I don't know what the evidence is on either side. I'm just listing the concerns and arguments that are heard. Do you know what it is, Mike? No. The floor elevation of the hotel? Is it lower than two feet plus the flood plain? It is, yes. But not by a lot, I think. It's like 1.7 or something. Ah, OK. So welcome, Mark. Sorry. We introduced Emery. Hi. And everybody went around and said their names when they joined and what their daytime work is. Life is hard, yes. Well, sorry I'm late. I had a last minute car problem, so I had to walk. So it was a little bit longer to get here. Yeah, I'm Barbara Connery. I've been on the Planning Commission not as long as those two, but I'm a licensed architect and taught at Vermont Technical College in the Sustainable Design Program for 20 years. So now, I just serve on a lot of boards, including one that's looking at the parking garage. And Barbara has two grown-up children who went through the Montpelier school system. Right, yes. Any other questions? No, thank you for the update. I was sorry to miss it, and so I was curious about the meeting. The big takeaway is it's going before the District Commission this week. And we'll see what happens there. Was part of that also triggered by the flood issues? Is that what you had said before, Micah, were there additional flood issues triggered by the Act 250? Yeah, once the project got put into Act 250, then they had to meet the state rules instead of the local rules. And so I guess initially they didn't think they were going to have to go through Act 250, so they didn't design to Act 250 standards. And then afterwards, when they got put into Act 250, then they had to kind of go through and make some tweaks. So that's why they depressed more of the area? Yeah, we required one foot under the old zoning, and the hotel was approved last year. I can't say, because I think our new river rules required the same. The new river rules do require two feet, but the hotel had already been approved under the old rules. That was odd. When we amended, we subdivided off. The parking garage became its own project and got redesigned, but the hotel remained the same. Then Act 250 came in and grabbed both pieces, and then both pieces got combined into a single project, even though they're two separate projects. One of which was already approved. One of which was already approved. Yeah, I see. And so it ended up being a little bit more complicated. Apparently the jurisdictional trigger was dwelling units. Number of dwelling units? Because it's been interpreted that a hotel room constitutes a dwelling unit. And if you have over a certain number of dwelling units, then it triggers Act 250 jurisdiction. For just that parcel? Or did that encompass all of the parcels around it as well? No, just that parcel. There were two projects on the parcel. Yeah. Two projects on the parcel, and they're sub-mining the one piece, so they kept them all as. And two different zoning ordinances. Two different zoning ordinances, one and one and one and one and one and the other. Is it a converted dwelling unit? That's my understanding. That's what was presented. I haven't looked into any of the details. Yeah, I hadn't ever understood that, but apparently it's been the case for a couple of years now that hotels are considered dwelling units under. And each room would be a dwelling unit. Each room is considered a dwelling unit, and therefore an 80-room hotel is going to be treated like an 80-room apartment building. And therefore it put it into Act 250. And some of the noteworthy details about the parking, how the parking will work, is the hotel pays for a certain number of parking spaces all the time. I think it's 200 spots, something like that. But when they're not being used, they can be double booked, so to speak. So you can come in and use them during the day when they're not in use already. But the guests would have their automatic parking spot because the hotel's paid for it. And then I think some of the other businesses around there might also pay for parking spaces. But it's utilizing the concept of shared parking that we had put into the zoning ordinance. There's no assigned parking. You can get parking passes, and you get leases to parking. But it's not assigned. And that the consistent purchasing of parking spaces is going to enable the city to pay off on the investment faster than it would otherwise. So yes, there were some concerns from the committee about someone who was asking about adequate parking, and Bill Friedrich kind of laughed and said, we would not be doing this if it wasn't increasing parking. So it's clear that that's the intent. And part of their intent, too, was to be in accordance with their current zoning so that they pulled the building back to a 20-foot set back from the top of bank. And they also reconfigured the original proposal for the exterior facade to give it a little bit more articulation so it's not just a slab of looks a little less like a parking garage. Maybe. Has green walls. For the bike path, it'll be right past it. Right, past it. Enjoy the view. And the new parking, the new park for the confluence was presented the other night as well. That is basically. Oh yeah, do you want to give us a quick question? Yes. Well, I have the sketches that they presented, but they presented three different schemes for the property that is at the end of the transit center and basically right across the railroad tracks from the parking garage. Is it the same consulting group that came up with three options for consideration? Yeah, it's the three options. Yeah, yeah. And they did a really nice job. And there are lots of really interesting proposals. And then they are also working with the proposal, the potential proposal for developing the east side of the confluence as well so that there would be matching, sort of matching parks. Because currently, the city and the transit center development purchased the Moab property. Can you tell me where that M&M beverage? M&M beverage. You're standing, you're looking at Shaw's. It's where all the big equipment is right now, digging. And they tore down M&M beverage and they eliminated that parking lot. Adjacent to the drawing board. So it's that kind of wedge-shaped piece of property there. And what the city had originally proposed for that was a development of a building and a parking lot. And what has to happen is that the train has to be retained through there and the bike path. The reason they purchased that land was to bring the bike path through it. Right, right. OK. But there's a proposal for a more park space. For a park rather than parking, yeah. OK. Interesting. Lots of things happening. And I hate to ask this, because they're just going to keep us out of their agenda. But how does that jive with the bridge's proposal for sustainable? It actually, the confluence park as proposed is very close to what the bridge has proposed. And so it's just a question of, can the logistics be worked out to allow for the park on the east side as well to match it? But some kind of a park needs to happen on the west side. Oh, thanks. Sure. Any other general questions? We move on. All right. Let's move on to item four. So this is where I invite members from the public to comment on anything that's not on the agenda. I'm assuming we have no comments. So we'll move on to item five, which is to continue work on the full punch list of zoning fixes. Mike, before you kick us off, back off into this, can you just give us a quick recap of what is actually before council right now, and what we're continuing on? All right, we were supposed to go. I was supposed to go in front of council on the night. And I didn't end up making it into my failure that night, so I will be on the agenda next week on Thursday. They're having a Thursday meeting, so. The 24th. The 24th. And on the 24th, I'll do the general presentation on the slopes and the landscaping. So just those two, not the buildable area, but the slopes and the landscaping pieces. Kind of give an overview presentation to council and see how much they want to get into the weeds on it, and see if and when they might be ready for a discussion on, or have a hearing on the interim adoption of those two pieces. Kirby, since you drafted this memo addressing both steep slopes and buildable areas, what are your thoughts about chopping it into two and sending the one on steep slopes to council now, since we actually have a little time before the meeting where they're going to get into it? And in some ways, it would be easier because it coincides with what Mike's saying. In other ways, the two are related. So in some ways, it is helpful to have them in the same document. I mean, I don't think either. There's not a big difference between doing it either way. But yeah, like I said, one advantage of them together is that some of the issues pointed out in the buildable area. Section, I have it here, relies on the steep slopes. They work together because if you can start building on them and then allowing more units on the buildable, or allowing more units on the parcels that have steep slopes, means you can then build on those steep slopes with the two together to that aspect of it. They kind of work together, but it doesn't matter so much. Do commissioners feel like we should submit the memo to council now with a clarification about what is actually on their agenda and what will be coming later? And we can go back and look at the memo. I just kind of want to. I think it'd be a lot cleaner to just let Mike go forward with the proposal that we have unanimity on, including the allowance of building on a 30% slope with DRB and engineered plans. So separate those two because the issues that are raised are different. And Kirby, you said that the buildable areas relies a little bit on the slope. Would you say the reverse? I'm going to I would need to change a little of the phrasing because the sections refer to one another a little bit. So I would need to obviously change the phrasing so it doesn't do that. That's really the only practical. I mean, there's only one area where you actually refer back to the previous section. There's at least one. I'm just thinking there might be another one. All right, well, let's table that and come back to it when we get to that part of our agenda. I just wanted to raise it now because it's part of our update where we are. So OK, we'll come back to that when we get to item six. So for now, let's continue on our list of zoning fixes. So we have these matrix that Mike put together. And the way that it's laid out. Well, Mike, why don't you describe it since you've already put it there. Yeah, so we're most of the way through it. So we'll be starting on number 55. But what you have for the three columns. The first column is the comment that was received. Many of these came from the zoning administrator because we're kind of doing a zoning. The zoning rules were adopted last January. So try to see how they work. As soon as we got them in, we started using them and realizing a couple of things that either we didn't have enough information on, it wasn't clear, or it was a typo, or it just needed to be fixed. So there was a comment that said, you need to fix this. There's a staff recommendation, which is my comment, which kind of go through and say, yeah, I agree that this is a problem and this is how I might fix it. And then the right-hand column is what was decided by the Planning Commission. Sometimes they agreed with the staff, sometimes they didn't agree, and they came up with a different decision. The yellow ones are just ones that need some additional work on my end. So I need to go through and put something together and make a map of the channelized stream banks, those types of things. So we've been working our way through and we're, as I said, we're up to number 54. So we've actually kind of gotten through a big chunk of them. What's left, from 55 on, there are two sets of colors on the left-hand side. The yellow ones are ones that I think we need to talk about. And the green ones are ones I don't think we need to talk about. And so we can talk about whatever ones anyone have questions on. But some of them just seem to make, there seems to be a logical answer to the question. So we're trying to get through these relatively quickly so we can get on to the more important things of doing the city plan. This is important. This is important, but we've all been waiting to get to the city plan. Yes, yes. So I need to kick us off because it looks like the first one is to discuss. The first one is to discuss. So 3204 is we are in the site plan section. And what we are talking about in 3204 is lighting, outdoor lighting. And so the comment was that for the most part, outdoor lighting has worked well. Two issues are with number three and number four. Number three talks about the uniformity requirement, which staff does not have any idea how to administer and enforce. I think the requirement is just that lighting shall be uniform. And we have projects like timber homes, which is a nine-acre parcel. So what do you mean by having light uniform? Do we have to uniformly light the entire nine acres? It doesn't seem to make any sense that that's what you mean. But the requirement is to uniformly light. We thought it doesn't seem to serve any purpose. It actually, we would see a lot of the opposite that you would probably light the doorways slightly more than you would light the parking lot or the white walkway. So actually, we kind of thought it actually was something we thought we could remove. We could strike number three because we didn't think it was useful, and we don't have any way to administer it effectively. Number four, the requirement is that you have to have energy star rating. And we've actually had a lot of problems surprisingly for applicants meeting that requirement. Almost all of them, including ones who worked with efficiency for months, had problems getting us the actual certification for energy star. So our recommendation is to change number four to shall be any LED lamps or energy star certified. So what are the problems with getting a certification? We just, and the cut sheets don't say energy star on them. There'll be an LED light and it doesn't have energy and energy star certification. And so we don't know if that's... I don't think they're necessarily certifying lamps, you know, like bulbs. That's been our issues. We just, we were supposed to require it and we've had a tough time getting that. So we think if it's LED, it's really that's kind of, our intent was to have energy efficient lighting. So what we want to see is LED lights. So if you do, if it's energy star, that's great. We'll accept that, but our recommendation would be to go with LED lamps as well. With number three, the uniformity ratio, that's for areas regularly traveled by vehicles or pedestrians. So if you have a nine acre parcel, you're not. Yeah, I was trying to get back to it so I could get for a nine acre parcel. There's a three to one or less between the highest and the lowest levels. Because we had unlit areas, so even a ratio of three to one, when you're trying to do a ratio from zero, you end up with zero. So. Well, if it's an area regularly traveled by pedestrians and vehicles, we probably don't want a, one that's probably has more than zero full candles there. Two, don't we want lighting where people are wanting? Just for security and safety. Yeah, I mean sidewalks and things like that. It's also worded in a way that I think allows for it for common sense. At 10 to one rate, it's just says ratios in excess of 10 to one are strongly discouraged. Oh yeah, it is limited Mike. It does say outdoor lining shall be designed to provide a uniform distribution of light in areas regularly traversed by vehicles or pedestrians. Light levels, uniform distribution of light. Mike. Like I said, I was following up on those comments. When they give you a lighting plan for a parking lot, do they typically give you enough information on the light fixtures so that you know what the recommended spacing distance is between the fixtures? We have the information to be able to calculate the output pretty well. So the lumens per acre. The lumen output. The lumen output, we usually have had a pretty easy time being able to follow up on that. Because then the photometric should be able to show you the distribution of each of the fixtures. But if they're not providing that, then it's pretty hard for you to tell. So maybe it's just a matter of what information you're getting. Or maybe it's a matter of understanding how to read the lighting. Photometrics. Photometrics. Okay, I mean, I'm willing to look at that and just go and look at that as a retraining. Do you have any suggestions for simplifying this one? Or do you think it's fine as is? And we just need to see whether it's possible to implement. By simplifying it, you add some rigidity to it. One thing, if the feedback was coming from the DRB, and it was like, we don't, this is hard to administer, but if the concern was, we don't want to measure this over nine acres, well that's not what's being asked here. I don't know, it seems like most plans come with measures of foot candles over traveled areas. Or we could require that they give enough information so that the zoning administrator could tell if they're not providing it now. Just trying to remember back to some of the applications, what were some of the issues that we had with that. So yeah, I mean, I can see, we can leave that. I mean, it's not going to be at the end of the world, we can, it is, as you said, it is probably flexible enough that we could continue to work on that, and as I said, maybe we'll see about having somebody explain a more straightforward way of being able to read those to determine, because I do know that then, we'll get the math which will have the numbers and it'll be a blanket of ones, and then it'll get some numbers. If it is just a matter of going and saying, if it's six directly under, and then it goes to threes, and then ones, you know, is that a problem? I mean, that's really what we look at, being able to go and say, can I just look at this and know, yeah, it's going to meet that rules. It goes from a six to a one, that would be more than a three to one, but it's less than a 10 to one. It's probably a question of identifying where people, where you're, where people are, where those regularly traveled areas are, right? Yeah, because, well, yeah, and we do have some, there's some requirements, because we've got a site plan, so we wouldn't know where the walkway is going to be. And they do give you a distribution plan with numerical equivalents on it. Yes, for the most part, that's what we've got in those. All right, good. Well, maybe we're just missing a detail that's an issue, but let us know if there is about number four, yeah, do everyone, okay, with the addition of four LED lights? Or LED or energy star. LED or energy star. Because they might not all be. Right, right. And I'll talk with Meredith and see what she's got on that one. Keep four, not three. So are we going to go through all the green ones, or are we just going to skip to the next yellow one? Well, I think we didn't, we didn't give people advance notice that we were going to use the consent agenda to go through the green one, so I think we should go through them. And what we don't get to today, we'll use a consent agenda method for, and if anyone has an issue on a green one, we can discuss it, otherwise it's deem approved, the staff recommendations deem approved. But for now, let's go through them. Okay. So. Do we want to go through the yellow and then come back to the green to make sure we get through the yellow? That's a good idea. Yeah, okay. All right, so. 57. Figure three dash 22. Appears to be mixed up or it's not clear, so on this, it's a table showing the total outputs. If you're a commercial and have only partially shielded light, then you can have 5,000 lumens. If you have a mixture of fully or partially shielded, then you can have 50,000 lumens. So a developer just needs to add one fully shielded light to allow 10 times more lumens, which doesn't make any sense. First, we're going to get another possibility is that the second row is a subset of the first row. So you can have 50,000 lumens, but only 5,000 of which can be partial shielded. It's not what it says, but maybe that's what they meant. So my suggestion was to consider a partially cutoff is considering the partial cutoff as such a small percentage of the total, maybe it would be clear to simply change the top line to be fully cutoff fixtures in the second line to be partially cutoff fixtures. Someone could theoretically get 55,000 per acre doing 550K of full and 5K of partial, but it would be clearer. Otherwise, rewording it to clarify the top is total of all fixtures and the bottom is where allowed. Three summer after this, I got lost in all the lumens. It's all the lumens. So, I don't know. I mean, that was elegant. On the... So the way this is worked in the table here is there's a commercial and there's a multifamily, but the first line says under commercial is all fixtures, all light fixtures fully plus partially, in zone one it's 50,000, in zone two it's 100,000, but if you have partially shielded lighting fixtures only you get 5,000 lumens per acre, so it just... It seems that we would want more fully shielded lighting. That's really what we want. So you'd kind of wanna go and take up top and if you're looking at the parenthetical where it says fully plus partially, if you just strike the partially, then if all lighting fixtures are fully cutoff, you'd get 50,000 lumens per acre because we're encouraging you to do that. We want you to do that. If you're gonna do only partially shielded then we're only gonna give you 5,000 lumens per acre. Yeah, but it's just the way it's worded here, it's like well, as long as I've got one fully shielded light, all of a sudden I get 10 times the amount of making it. I couldn't rationalize in my head where this was trying to go, so one answer was to just go make this fully, make that partial, and in which case somebody could theoretically do 50 plus five to get 55,000. So I have no more than 5,000 come from partly shielded. Yeah, and that would be the other option, would be to go and say here's what you've got. So you're just saying strike partially from the top one, the old light fixtures? Yeah, that's one of the options. I said just take that partially out and it becomes. That seems the simplest method to deal with this, right? Sounds good. Everyone, go with that approach? Mm-hmm. Okay. 62. 62. This is just a general question of whether you want me to develop something. It's come up on a couple of times whether we wanted to have the general PUD section without any density bonuses. Just if somebody wanted to be able to cluster a development for some reason. Is there anything preventing them from doing so? Right now we don't have any rules to allow them to do it. So if you want to do a PUD, you have to do one of our set PUDs that we have. But you could do a cluster PUD and just not make use of the density bonus, right? Not if it's, well, yes, but you'd still have to meet those other requirements that are within that. You'd still have to either a new neighborhood. And if you're in a district that didn't allow it, didn't allow that particular PUD. So it was really more of a question. The other side where I would probably think maybe we don't is that a lot of this is supposed to be zoning fixes and that's really not a zoning fix as much as the other ones. But we've had people who've wondered whether we could. That's what I was wondering. What's it? It just seems, well, I struggle sometimes with the whole concept of a PUD when they're all just subdivisions that are different. And this is just too vague to have. This isn't really proposing anything. It's just saying like, I would have to craft a PUD, more generalized PUD set of rules that you guys would have to consider. This wouldn't be approving it. It would just be telling me to do it. I wouldn't put in the work if you guys weren't interested in having. It seems like we have quite a variety of PUDs now that in fact, I thought people were generally feeling that we had too many PUDs. Yeah, the issue just being that what we have are a lot of very specific PUDs. And if somebody just went and said, I've got land that's a little bit disconnected, I'm gonna subdivide, I would like to subdivide them in this way. I'm allowed to have three lots. I wanna make three lots, but. Three lots without proposing development. Without proposing specifically an infill PUD because I don't need the density bonuses, but I just want us. So it's more. They can't meet the regular subdivision. Yeah, if they were in the rural district and they wanted to just make three half acre lots, I just, you know, I've got this land, I've got plenty of density, but I just wanna make three half acre lots, but I don't really wanna go through the whole. Conservation PUD, because that's really for something much bigger than what I wanna do. I just want to make a couple of small lots. So it's really more about making lots, subdividing lots than it is about developing. PUDs, yeah, PUDs are really subdivisions. But these are the specialized ones that we established before were sort of to encourage people to do certain types. Yes. And what you're saying is you're looking for something simpler so somebody could just subdivide land and not necessarily propose a development on it. But that's a subdivision. Yeah, so is that different than a subdivision? I don't know. You have to meet all of the zoning rules if you're doing subdivision. PUD lets you kind of break some of the rules. So I guess which ones are being proposed to be broken with this? It could be, usually it's the lot sizes or frontages or those types of rules that kind of give you more flexibility. So when you wrote here, the idea has been mentioned especially for owners of sites with challenging conditions. What do you mean by challenging conditions? Somebody could have 15 to 20% slopes. You're allowed to build on those. You're not losing the density on those. But if they could take the density and move it up, they could be able to use it, use their land more effectively. They have enough buildable land in a certain area. We've just got different dynamics for individual lots. And so we've had people who've wanted to go and look at some of these PUDs. But having to meet one of the required PUDs puts them into a different box. Do you have any examples? I'm trying to think about for ones that have been more specifically proposed. I haven't had any of them that have specifically come in but we also haven't had any PUDs come in either. So any of the other PUDs. So as I said, this one was less. This was one that came in early in the process that somebody had asked about whether they could do just a general one and I said no. And they were like, well, it seems like we could just drop the minimum lot size and not change the density. It comes in a counting headache. No different than it would for PUD. Yeah, I think it's just a matter of if we're gonna allow the rules, yeah, if it's just lot size, but the question sometimes comes up, if it's sometimes it's lot size plus the Cefax. So if you wanna get a waiver on Cefax because you're gonna propose zero lot Cefax and so you're gonna do kind of a townhouse duplex. You can own half, you own the land plus this half and that person owns the land and well that means you got a zero lot line Cefax in between and you're required to have five feet. The only way that happens is through a PUD. So you end up with different options that can come up if you've got the flexibility of being able to propose zero or low lot. So like even with an infill development, I mean, would that infill PUD not permit you to have a zero, those kinds? It depends if it's in a district that's allowed to have zero lot line. Oh, I see. So this broadens it to other districts then. Then you can do other things. You just can't get a density bonus because a general PUD wouldn't, but if it's too much, if there was a lot of support that people really kind of wanted it, I could pull together some proposals but I wouldn't want to get lost for 45 minutes trying to push. I think that's where we're headed. Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate your concern there. I think this is sort of a broader policy question that maybe is best put on hold for the time being. We don't really have a clear proposal to consider. Not really sure exactly what is missing in the zoning as it is. So giving a little bit more time to see if there are other issues that we could address with an initial PUD and it makes sense. I'm not hearing an appetite from the other commissioners. I'm kind of curious to understand it. Well, both my personal understand it more and hear more about our proposal but I don't want to take up time that. Yeah. But I'm just kind of curious if there's people who aren't building on lots that they might build. Well, they might not necessarily build on them now. Yeah, the classic what you have in some cases is this goes to the question of the buildable areas which I don't want to get too much into but some communities will simply go through and say that you can't build on the wetlands but you can move that density somewhere else. But sometimes moving that density somewhere else means you've got 10 acres, five acres is wetland. Two acres zoning districts. Well, we'll let you move that up and do five one acre lots by doing a PUD. It's just a matter of you're not getting any density bonus. You're getting exactly the same amount that you would and you're conserving that area that you can't build on but if it were 20% slow you can move it up but sometimes you also then need waivers for other requirements and the PUDs kind of built for that. This seems like a good issue to revisit as part of our city plan assessment when we assess how the zoning is working towards achieving the goals that we set and if there's a gap that we need to fill this. But we'll just be aware there might be a gap. So yeah, and maybe if you could think about any particular situations or conditions where this would be beneficial as we go into the city plan, that would help. Yeah. Next yellow, 87. All right, 87. Five definitions. So we had, back in part one, part one is kind of the introduction. What we had was some of a discussion about the first yellow one here on number three. We had a recommendation to, we define development in part five and then we had this informational bullet up in part one and they weren't written exactly the same. So we said we really shouldn't have it that way. We really should strike the informational bullet and you guys agreed. So we struck the informational bullet. The question that was left unanswered is three and this one are tied together is whether we should be moving the definition of development and this also refers to subdivision and parcel as well. Whether all three of those should potentially be moved up front. Up front, meaning to part one. To part one. Now the reason for that, I've done this on a lot of my regulations is when we're reviewing applications as they come in one of the first things we try to do is we envision applications as kind of like a thing of buckets. So those things, you can't reach the bottom buckets until you fall into the top bucket and the first bucket is development. So what needs a zoning permit is development and development has a definition. And so a lot of times I'll put that right up front to go through here is the definition of development and here are the exceptions. So we put in a big umbrella to say, there are two ways of doing it. You can put in a big umbrella and catch everything and then give some exceptions or you can be very narrow and go through and say only these things need to get a permit and what zoning usually does is this big broad definition of development being construction, installation, demolishing, reconstructing, converting, structural alterating, blah, blah, blah, all the way through and then we have a list of exceptions. What we have in our zoning is our definition of development is in the back and all of our exceptions are in the front. And so what I usually do is to put them together where I have one list of, this is what needs a permit and here are your exceptions and putting them together so we can have that initial review right there. So usually you don't define it in the back because you'll put it in the front. Why is this the other way? It sounds fine. It's a change. Whatever makes it easier for you, I agree we should keep all the definitions together and change things. There are a couple of things that's clear for applicants too. It's just sometimes, I don't know what people, which one somebody is gonna go and say, absolutely not. Well, John Anderson isn't hearing more. He was really into the definitions. Yes. You really have three attorneys to deal with. So the late addition, so these are in less order because what happened was I put this list together really now in maybe September, August, September and we started going through them and then these things kept getting chipping back in. So the next one, 109 for section 3002.C. We needed to clarify if a two unit building can be subdivided as if it's a single family dwelling. So what we said for, I'll set the stage. 3002, we talk about the density and what we had all agreed and put into the zoning was that if you have a single family home, you can have a duplex. Yeah. So now the question comes up. If somebody has a duplex and wants to subdivide, how much land do they need? Sounds like a riddle. And we have, this is an actual case that we've had is somebody who, you know, let's say you're in the zoning district, residential 6,000 and you have 12,000 square feet. And you have- How do we want to treat? Yeah. And you have a duplex, that's fine. Treat them as though they're a single family home for purposes of subdividing further or do we want to treat them as already having two units for purposes of subdividing further? That's what my understanding is. Yes. I have another wrinkle to throw into that is that if the existing building is actually a single family plus an accessory dwelling, because the other unit is so small that it really qualifies as an accessory, which is not another dwelling unit by our definition, then it is a single family regardless of how it's current, you know, how it's listed in the grand list. So this has actually been a question for me too. If you can meet all the other requirements. Yeah. Okay, go next. Yeah, because what we had was an actual case of a residential 3,000, you know, they had a 7,000 square foot lot and they wanted to subdivide, and the question was, they have the duplex, the duplex would fit on the 3,000 square foot lot, which would be allowed if they had a single family home, they could have sub-vite, make a single family home and then convert it to a duplex. The question is if it's already a duplex, can you subdivide it? Sure. And we kind of thought, yes, but it wasn't clear, so we just wanted to confirm if everybody's okay with that, we can tweak those. Basically, if it was 3,000 square feet from the beginning, the duplex would be allowed. Yep. Because it was a single family home, you can have a duplex. So just because it's having a particular order, I don't think it should operate differently. I've read, yeah. And so we actually have told them because of the way the rules were like, well, you could remove the single family home, but. Are there any concerns with that approach? I have to say I don't really understand it. Well, yeah, we should make sure you, everyone understand. Yeah, I'm not sure what I'm not. So going the one direction, I'll talk about the first direction. So the way the zoning was written, if you have, if you're in residential 3,000, you need to have 3,000 square feet per unit. You have a 3,500 square foot lot, so you can have a single family home. And then what our rules said was, anyone who has a single family home on a legal lot is allowed to have a duplex. And I won't get into all the reasons why, but there are reasons why because of accessory apartment rules. It just made sense easier to enforce so you can have a duplex. What we started to do is have some people who came in the other way to go through and say, wait, I have a duplex that's shuffled all the way over onto this side of the lot and I have a 7,000 square foot lot. Can I subdivide my duplex and put it on a 3,500 square foot lot? Oh, this is a different question than I thought you were asking. No, that's the actual application we received. So they actually want to subdivide their property. They now want to subdivide the property so they would have a second building lot. Because it's empty anyways. So they want to take the empty lot, subdivide it and they would keep their duplex a duplex and have that other lot to develop separately. And the question is, well, you'd be doubling the density, but for us, we're like, well, they could convert, come in, get a change of views, convert the duplex to a single family home, subdivide and then put another permit back in to go back from a single family home to a duplex and then build on the other lot. They can get there anyways. The question is, do we want to make them jump through that many times? Do we want to make them jump through all those hoops to do that? Or do we just simply go and recognize that if you can do it this direction, we're going to let you do it this direction. How can you convert an existing duplex back to a single family? Yeah, take the kitchen out, take the kitchen out. Take the dividing door. Even if you have tenants in there, people wouldn't do that. Well, or you could claim that it was a single family and accessory. Yeah. You could change it. But the important thing to remember is that, with a 3,000 square foot lot, in Res 3000, that a single family home could become a duplex, even though they don't have 6,000 square feet of lot area, because we're allowing that to increase our density capability in existing buildings. But if you have a three-unit building and a small lot and extra space, you couldn't do it. Oh, jeez. No, then it gets more complicated. No, you can't with a three-unit, because you don't have that guaranteed. Right. But it's not only a case for duplexes. Single to duplex, kind of. Yeah. And the policy rationale for that was that you're not changing the character of the neighborhood by having a second family living in that same building. Oh, OK. Three. Right, I know, like, it's kind of arbitrary, but all right. So, Mike, can I ask the, are we done with that one, or can I ask a similar question of what if you have an existing home with an accessory dwelling in it, then they should be able to duplex as well? Yes. Right. Yes, we usually actually encourage people to apply as a duplex just because there's less restrictions. Apply. I mean, unless they're trying to get in, apply for their zoning application, because usually they're permitted uses either way. The accessory apartments have other rules under them. Yeah, you're approaching it as though the accessory isn't there and needs to be permitted. Is that what you're thinking of? Yeah. OK. Well, if there's a single family home with an accessory already, can the single family home still convert to a duplex? Yes. That's the question. Yes, right. Well, you can't know that, well, the conversion, I was thinking the conversion is to a, the accessory apartment rule only applies for parcels that have a single family dwelling. So if you want to add another unit over the garage, so if you already had a house with an accessory apartment inside, and you wanted to add another apartment in the garage, you'd go from a single family to a triplex. To a duplex. To a three unit. But our rules say that an accessory unit is not considered a dwelling unit. So that means that a single family home with an accessory is a one single family home. But it's only allowed for properties that are single family dwellings. So as soon as you add a second unit, you're now a two unit, not a single family, so you can't have the accessory apartment. And the accessory apartment automatically gets booted to a unit. I don't see that. What are we practically talking about right now? She's asking about a very narrow specific case about if you had a single family, as opposed to saying you went single family to duplex, which we allow, if you had a single family plus apartment. Right. I understand what the question is. I'm asking, what are we really talking about? I guess the question, it speaks to the policy of how many dwelling units do we want to be able to and be present on. Can you have the apartment also divided into two other units, have basically three units, but then call yourself single family? But is that allowed? And what Mike's saying is no. It's not three equal units, though. Accessory apartment is a very tall list. You're just asking, why are we? Where does this fall on this point? That question is not on this one. I thought it was part of this one, because it's come up from questions from the public, for me, three different conditions. The answer is, we count, in our definition section here, we count the amount of use by the parcel, not by the structure. So if you have, we're going to look at it, as soon as you have two units, as soon as you say, though this is single family home with an apartment, and you're going to put another apartment in, that's considered three units. But what if you have a single family plus accessory? That's not a single family plus apartment, but anyway. Yeah, it's a good conversation. But you can only have the accessory apartment with a single family property. Seems like a good conversation to continue. I'll tell him to go back to the list after the meeting. I'm just trying to avoid going back and forth like you were trying to avoid with this. Yeah, and that wouldn't be possible. So do we have consensus on number 109? What was? Yeah. All right. It should operate the same, no matter what order you do. Yeah. OK. So under 111, some conflict exists between 3505, which is lot arrangement. So 3505, we are talking about subdivision standards. And 3505 is design and configuration of parcel boundaries. So if you're doing a subdivision, lot arrangement, and 3009 storm water, the former requires positive drainage away from buildings and not to concentrate drainage onto adjacent lots while the latter says storm drainage shall not negatively affect adjacent properties. Right. Double negative. Shall not negatively affect. Yes. I'm not sure if that's actually what says I have to look that one up. My thought is that the former requirement under lot arrangement can be struck, not all of 3505, but just that requirement. The actual subdivision of land does not create drainage patterns. When new lots are subdivided, when new lots are developed, they will need to meet the latter rules. And subdivision could be designed to provide a common land location for concentrated drainage and treatment and infiltration. I would rather we leave the requirement with some amount of performance standard to be met. What is preventing these from being read in harmony? Because just because you need to ensure that there's drainage from your building doesn't mean that it has to go onto your neighbor's property. There's a way to achieve both, both taking it away from draining it from yours and not negatively affecting. All right, so number seven. So not developing a property that just has a slope that drains towards your neighbor's property. You are having catchment basins or other. Right, but you would have to modify your blot significantly in order to create that. And I don't see why you couldn't have both of them working together, too. Yeah, so this one, what number seven says, which this didn't say the specific, but number seven says so that the applicant shall design the subdivision so that there shall be positive drainage away from building sites and a coordinated stormwater drainage pattern for the subdivision that does not concentrate stormwater drainage from each lot to adjacent lots. So what that means is, as this is written, is cannot concentrate the drainage. Don't create a drainage swell that drains onto an adjacent property. Drives into an adjacent property, but you're doing the subdivision. So you couldn't, under this rule, concentrate the drainage to a common land parcel. Oh, I see. You couldn't make a pond on lot two and have everything drain into some swales that would eventually end up in the pond or the tension because you can't concentrate the storm drainage. Yeah, I didn't read it as adjacent lots in the subdivision. Right, everyone's assuming it's like the neighbor. The neighbor, right. Of course you can't drain it to the neighbor. Yeah. So I think my thought was, we don't need number seven here because when the lot is going to be developed, it's going to have to meet 3009, which is our stormwater regulations. If there's 3009, ensure that there's positive drainage. It just says placeholder. Oh, it does. We don't have it. No, I think there's might be looking at an old copy. Maybe you've got types of drainage systems, but it doesn't. It's hard to navigate. It doesn't target a specific. OK. 3009, it is still, you have an older version on yours, apparently, because it says final draft. Favorite thing from planners and attorneys. It's on 3-19. Final, final draft on it. 8-1-3-2008. Oh, yeah, you have an old look at the date. Page 3-19. Oh, wait. Yes, 3-19. So it does talk about stormwater drainage shall not negatively affect adjacent properties. Yes. So that, in this case, they would be talking about neighbors of the subdivision, right? Yes. Yeah, OK. So what's the proposal like? Can you say right now? Just to take out number seven out of the lot arrangement rules, because it's going to be covered under 3009. And the other issue that we've come up with is a lot of the subdivision rules. Subdivision is the subdivision of land. There is no, the development of those lots happens as a separate process. And so really, there are times where it's difficult to, we write a lot of recommendations in these that kind of go into, well, this doesn't really happen until it's developed at a later time, because we get an application just to subdivide the land, not to develop it. So I would just take out number seven. Any concerns with that? OK, OK. So you're taking out? Just number seven. Number seven, I'll make. OK, fun one. 117. This S actually should be pretty easy. Why is there a question mark after 3,005? It's a little bit of a mix. 3,005 is riparian buffers. So water setbacks apply to everything that we put on that map that we adopted. And what we have found now is water setbacks still apply to buried streams, but not the required buffer. And I think the way we did that was we tried to remove the stream that was buried from the map. Yeah, and we did that in one case. We found it two more. So suggestion was made by DPW. So we still need possibly use a different setback. Suggestion made by DPW that we use 10 foot from center line of Culver or the buffer requirement, whichever is greater. The state wants to reopen as many of these buried streams as possible. So if we at least require the buffer distance, generally 50% of the water setback, then we can restore the buffer in the future if we do. So I think we're just looking at setbacks from a buried stream. What should that number be? And the first answer is DPW wants at least 10 feet, so they can get in there and work on it. Another question is, if we are looking to the future and saying we may want to uncover this stream, should we make it as wide as the setback would be or the buffer would be, but we're not going to actually require that? How many of these do we have? We have found four of them already. So the most recent one we found was if you're on the Berrymont Pilly Road on Route 302, San Al Auto Parts, it's a buried stream. It goes right through their parking lot. And they came in to put a proposal in for their parking lot. And that was when we discovered that there's actually a buried stream through that. There's entire subdivisions up off Burlin Street. There's a stream that's coming up, one of the longer ones. I want to say it's Wheelock, but it's not. It's Wheelock. One of the ones that starts right at the bottom, right on River Street, comes all the way up the Burlin Street. Wheelock does that. So Wheelock? Wheelock, I think so. OK. So there's actually a stream that's paralleling it for quite a ways. And then it stops and it gets buried. And then there are a number of subdivisions that are kind of going off to the right. And the stream is actually buried right up through backyards, frontyards, sideyards. So as people come in to do any number of projects, then it goes under and it goes up to the other side of Burlin Street. And it starts hooking up and gets behind all of those houses that are on Burlin Street as that stream continues to get buried up. And then there's a farm on the top where it reed daylights again. So a lot of projects, whether it's people want to build garden sheds or people want to build whatever we've got. What do we allow? Do we treat these as streams? Or do we ignore them all together? We've got a number of things we could do. We could ignore them all together. We could treat them as streams. We could do as DPW suggests, which is to keep a 10-foot. We have them mapped. We simply go through and say, 10 feet from the centerline of that, you can't put any new structures. Is there an easement now through outbreaks? In some cases, yes. In some cases, no. So people might not know that they're there. I think there are quite a number of people who probably don't even know that there is one. That they have one. There is one there. Yeah, and then for somebody to propose in the future, oh, we're going to open this up. And they don't even know it's there. Yeah. Yeah, it's rough. Yeah. That's what it is. It's a surprise. Yeah, I wonder what their mortgage inspection is. I don't think that would happen to open some of those back up, but we should at least recognize the fact that the city, they need to get in there at some point to repair that culvert in that very extreme. Probably a good idea not to have sheds on it then. Not to put the sheds and stuff. And so the DPW suggestion was just to say we'll map these. We'll put it as a separate marker on our natural resource inventory. So you'll have streams, and then you'll have buried streams that might be a dashed line. And then in the rules, we can just set a thing. Is there anything at the dashed line? We'll have a 10-foot setback for any new structures, plus or minus. We should probably add that buried stream that we removed back on the map. I don't know where it was. That one is Gallison Hill. That was a Malone property that had a buried stream. Zach, who is the GIS specialist, seems to think he's got a good database that we might be able to pull some of that data out of to make a more accurate map for us. But even if it's not on the map, if we've got a rule that says buried streams are treated this way. Yeah, so how do we want to treat them? That's the next question. Yes. So I would suggest that at least the plus or minus 10 feet. What would it be if they were above ground? What would the setback be? It would depend on the district. It goes back to the district table in here. So if you were for Eastern Gateway, we talked about sandal auto parts having their thing. They had a 50-foot setback from water. So that would be plus or minus 50 feet. We thought that was probably a little much. If this is the most backyard, that would probably eliminate building potential. That would probably have a significant effect. So that was why I think there was at least a plus or minus 10 feet. Who makes the decision about reopening? Oh, that would have to be something. I've just, when I've heard from some people and I talk about the fact that we have buried streams, they're like, oh, we should work to get those unburied at some point. Just for aesthetic reasons or some of those? Water quality, flood, some of these. But I think the reality is when you look at where a lot of these buried streams are, you know, running through people's backyards, running through people's front yards, up through roads, it kind of doesn't seem likely in a lot of cases that they'll ever be uncovered. But occasionally, there are ones that are in an area that might be, but. So 10 feet from the center line of the pulver, which would be, would that be five on other side or 20? 10 feet from the center line. So 10 feet on other ones, so 20 feet. Everyone. Maybe it's cold for it, sir, but I would imagine. DPWs. They vary at your yard. Dig down, you'll find out. I mean, I would assume 20 feet's enough. Yeah. Yeah, that's what their suggestion is. I mean, nothing will be bigger than that. We're not Philadelphia. Yeah, we're usually carrying, that was a six-foot pipe that would be pretty big. All right, what's our next one? Let's try it. Let's continue this until seven, and then let's switch to talk about curving memos. All right, so now we jump back to figure 210, which, so these are the zoning districts in part two. So residential 6000 zoning district is a relatively common district. It's found in a lot of places. And it's been, it's come up in three different cases now. It's been noted that the setback is now 15 feet in front. So the front setback is now 15 feet under the old zoning for the similar-sized zoning district. We had different names. But MDR used to have 10 feet for the setback. So it makes a difference for some projects. But let's see. But I typically found that their neighbors were 15 feet. Exemplarity exists for matching a budding property. So I would leave as is. So I think I made this yellow. My recommendation is not to change it. But it was an issue that had come through my office enough times that I thought I at least wanted to let you guys know we'd gotten this comment for Gallison Hill College Street, a couple of them that the front setbacks were 10 feet. They're increased. We've moved them to 15 feet. But then they would still be covered by the matching adjacent properties. Yes. If they have matching adjacent properties, they could match them. Yeah. So that was why I said they haven't out to do it. But because I'd gotten enough comments on it. And similarly, on 211, the next one down. Well, before we move on, what were their arguments in support of the smaller setback other than the fact that it used to be smaller? In some cases, you don't always end up getting your 15 feet. So I think in one case, they did not have 10 feet to the left and right. But they had a subdivision which had identified a building footprint for where they were going to build the house. And they had subdivided under the old rules and were now ready to build under the new rules and now could not build because their building footprint isn't allowed. So they had to redesign their project and move back because they had subdivided under an assumption they could build a building where they now came. That's not really a very compelling argument. It's unfortunate, though. Why were the setbacks increased? For the most part, setbacks almost always got smaller or remained the same. And Brandi did most of the legwork on these to come up with these, looking at Google Maps and these other things. And she found that most of them had 15 foot setbacks. So even though I don't think she was specifically looking at the old, the right thing. Yeah, we were trying to match what's on the ground. So she was just looking what's on the ground and wasn't looking at the old zoning. I think what also might have happened is that this neighborhood, in particular, lobbied pretty hard to get downzoned. So those dimensional requirements were drawn from the post-war neighborhoods, whereas they are an older neighborhood that is actually a higher density. So that's why maybe those things don't match up. So they did have to redesign. They could not build on that building footprint that was identified. Correct. But it was still possible to build. Well, they haven't gotten a permit yet. They're still working on it. As I said, that was just one of them. I should leave it as it is. All right, that was my recommendation. I would leave this one as it is. Is everyone comfortable with that? OK. So the second one where we found there was a difference between the old zoning and the new zoning and how things got harder was in residential 9,000. It's been noted the front setback changed from 10 feet to 20 feet. And the side setback went from 10 feet to 15 feet. So my comments, and I was at the side setback, looks like it could be moved to 10 feet. But there are waiver provisions that we have in the zoning now. Most of residential 9,000 areas met the 20-foot setback. But I could see 15 as there is no waiver for front setbacks or we could allow such waivers. So the waiver for matching adjacent properties is not part of residential 9,000? I think the issue is 9,000 tends to have, things tend to be spread out a little bit more in the 9,000s. Yeah. But they would still potentially have adjacent neighbors. I think they would. So the front could work that way. But that one had a much greater shift than the other one did. And actually, Gallison Hill was the res 9,000 one. So this was 6,000. This was also matched to what was on the ground, right? Yes. And you said there's a waiver? There are waiver provisions. Unless the matching side setbacks is only for certain zoning districts, I'm pretty sure it applies to any zoning district setbacks. It sort of makes sense that we're moving up. We went from a front setback of 15 feet and res 6 to 20 feet and res 9. Yeah, incremental. What's your recommendation? I think on this one, it's been a while since I wrote some of these, so I got to get my brain engaged and where I was thinking. But I think in some of these, the side setback could be moved to 10 feet. There are waiver provisions. So I don't know if there's necessarily anything that has to be done on this one. Certainly, usually if I had a specific recommendation I would usually be pretty clear about that. I think this was just these two together were really a matter of pointing out the fact that for the most part, we made things a lot smaller. Setbacks got smaller to try to match what was on the ground. And in these two cases, we made things a little bit bigger. And a couple of people have pointed out that we've made those changes. But I don't think either one is the end of the world. I think maybe doing the suggestion on this one and allowing some more flexibility may be having things slightly closer together because it's not going to look any more squished together than the rest 6,000 worst case. So you're suggesting that we change the side, both the front and the side? What I'm thinking for Mike is that he seems to think the side of 10 makes sense. I didn't get a strong sense of it. Huh? No. Yeah, I mean, I think there's something. You don't have a strong recommendation, but do you have a recommendation? Do I have a recommendation? I'm going to come back to this. I'm just looking at the waiver really quick, though. So the waiver is for side 10 feet less than the district standard, but not less than five feet. And yeah, so there's their waiver provisions in there to get back to. For front and side? For side and rear. I'm just trying to find that front setback that has the, I know it's in here somewhere about matching. Can't find it right. So I won't waste a lot of time looking for it. But we talk about it above. There is an exemption already exists for matching a flooding property. So I would imagine that that would apply in this district as well. So I don't think we have to change anything. I guess would be my recommendation. OK. I think it's just important for everybody to know that there were a couple of places we found work out harder for development. Like you said, there's one place. There are ways. Suggestion. And I actually believe John made this suggestion to add three and four unit residential to the site plan exemption. And let's go back to scene number 42. The idea of exempting smaller residential projects from site plan makes sense. But as a policy decision, the board should review the site plan criteria to see if we would want to make sure they're reviewed. If not, they should be exempt. So I believe John's suggestion was under site plan by statute, single and two-family structures are exempt from site plan. Which rule provision is safe plan? Three, two, zero, one, three dash, one, six. Some of the thinking behind this is you can get a mortgage for four unit the same way you would for a single family. And we have a lot of one four unit. Well, actually, four units and multi-family. Five units, multi-family. Well, yeah, I guess now the coordinates to the building code, though, right? Wouldn't Chris be considered four units under different criteria than one to three? I don't know. Maybe it does only split at five. I thought it split at five. But I'm not really clear on the building. So what site plan does look at, though, is bike and pedestrian, landscaping and screening, outdoor lighting, outdoor seating and display. Probably wouldn't apply anyways. Solar access and shading, and design and compatibility. So if we exempted three and four units, those rules would no longer apply to a three and four unit building. And so currently, the three and four units are considered major. They are going for major site plan approval? It depends on the project. They could be a major. They could be a minor. They could. But in any case, they need to meet those requirements. Yeah, we would have to evaluate. I guess I'd rather keep them with some overview. Well, they have some. Yeah, but with these specific areas that we asked for before. So see argument for taking them out, three and four. We're trying to encourage more housing units, more households coming to Montpelier. And it seems a little weird that someone who wanted to add a unit to create a four unit building, an existing building would then have to come up with a plan, a pedestrian plan, and go through all of this review for something that it seems like the standards are written for significant development. We've got a lot of stuff in place here. We have 170 pages of regulations that still need to be applied to. They still may have to go through design review. I guess it's just raising that bar a little bit. I guess it'd be helpful if we could see an example as anybody tried to apply for three or four. I mean, they're still going to have to go through to get a building permit. Yeah, they'll still need a zoning permit. They just won't need to go through site plan. They'll need a zoning and a building, right? And we've gone through the proposal we put together for the landscaping requirements, went through and more clearly defined what projects we're going to need it. So a renovation project is probably going to be less likely to trigger many of the landscaping requirements because you need to have a parking lot with 10 or more if you don't need to meet the parking lot requirement. There are just certain triggers. And if you don't hit them, you might not have to. So now three or four units may not need to click very many of these boxes. So even though there are seven requirements, bike and pedestrian may easily be able to be met or it may be something that is met. It's good to go through the problem here, go to by the neighbors, have a public hearing. Yes. Well, yeah, that may be triggered in other areas too. You're still going to end up getting an engineer because you need sprinklers and a number of other building requirements that fall into place. For three and four, yeah. So Mike, what's your recommendation? You wrote that it makes sense to you, but what does that mean? Well, I was listening to John's description of his recommendation. And I thought it's a fairly straightforward process. How many projects would we deny for parking, for bicycles? And I didn't think there were a lot of these as major significant projects. I mean, one of the goals that we had in putting forward our new zoning was efficiency and streamlining the process. I think we streamlined it. I think for most of the smaller ones, they're going to be minor site plans. They're going to be administrative. It's not going to be as big of a deal. I think if your goal is to really streamline it, then it makes sense. That's why I kind of really fall back. It's really a policy decision. From an administrative standpoint, I can do it either way. We aren't having a hard time approving these small projects right now. I think when we get to the city plan, we're going to talk about housing a lot. Then we're going to talk about, I plan to talk about tearing down barriers to getting more housing units in. And this would be the kind of thing we'll be searching for. So let's skip a bunch of time and go ahead and remove this requirement. Yeah. Any concerns with that? I guess I'd like to see a consideration more in terms of what would actually be triggered in site plan review. If someone is going to suddenly discover that they're on the neighboring property or building a four-unit building, then this gives them some assurance that they are putting in screening. Yeah, I mean, they're sort of just doing minimum. Why don't we come back to this at our next meeting then? Or we could wait until we do the city plan if that's something that Kirby wants to bring up then. Well, here's what I'm thinking. We only have three more yellow, so I'd like to get through those. And then at the next meeting, we'll have all of the green treated as a consent agenda, where that means that we're going to deem staff's recommendation approved unless somebody has a concern with one of these items. And so we can go back to this yellow one at the next meeting. And at that point, we decided we want to wait for the city plan we can, but at least we'll have a little bit more time to talk about it. So that was item 125. So let's do 126. So 126, I think it's yellow primarily because we had talked about not doing anything for signs at this point. And my recommendation for this one was the definition of signs, any device, and it's a pretty long definition of used for visual communications intended to attract the attention of the public invisible from the public right away or other properties. And I think I just wanted to put in their commercial. I think we were just getting some other for commercial purposes after the words. Do you mind if I just look at yours quickly and get you to look through the funnel? Oh, yes. It's white. Used for visual communications for commercial purposes intended to attract the attention. What would the outcome be? It would be there would be less approval process for signs that weren't commercial. We're talking about garage sale. Well, there's non-commercial signs. Usually there's an exemption. Usually you tend to only regulate commercial signage. And our definitions of signs actually contains any of those types of communications, even if they're commercial or non-commercial. I'm fine. So what would be a definition of a non-commercial? Would it be a sandwich board? Burny Sanders sucks. But we said, but not a commercial sign. But political signs are. But this doesn't say. This says any sign which is intended to attract the communications of people. I thought we separated political signs. We do, but we define sign as including. As including that. Everything that attracts attention. So this is saying that it has to be of the right size. And it has to be pretty. And your Burny Sanders sucks. Yes. It's not regulating content. But what we're doing is we're going to say we really are. It's not limiting to. The idea was to get that. But I also know we had had a discussion that said we wanted to kind of table a lot of the sign stuff. Because we really wanted to pull signs out, maybe make a separate sign ordinance, and really kind of tackle that as its own thing. So I didn't. But this is a small change. This is a small change of people I wouldn't tell them. Yeah, I think we should get out of here. Always come back to signs. So these last two kind of came up very recently. One is chapter 470, which is enforcement, should be revised and organized more like chapter 400 of the River Hazard Regulations. So our administrative officer found that the enforcement rules are too restrictive and not organized well in these zoning. So she reviewed the River Hazard Rules, which are following the same statute. It found that it would be much clearer and it would require a large strikeout. So before I do that, I wanted to go and get your blessings first. The primary issue she had just by way of example is somebody has an illegal sign that they put in the wrong place. And so they said they were going to put it on their site plan here and they put it five feet closer to the road, which we noticed them with a notice of violation. And they have to fix it. But under the River Hazard Rules, we have a provision that gives the zoning administrator the ability to sign an agreement with a property owner where you cannot come into compliance. If we said, hey, you're supposed to have screening there and you don't have screening and it's January, we can't expect you to go out and be planting arborvites or fences in January. So we would make a provision that says, you have to fix it and you have to fix it by May 30. In the same way, this person has to move a sign and they can't move the sign in January. They've got to wait until the spring. But Meredith doesn't have the ability to simply sign an agreement. Say you do it later. Say you have to do it and you're going to agree to do it, but here's your deadline. And we just want to be a little bit more business friendly and be able to sign these types of agreements. So that was her recommendation and kind of why. Don't let this strike out. Everyone good with that? OK. If you really want to see it, you can look at the River Hazard Rags. They'll kind of look awful a lot like that. So 3007, the last yellow. What is 3007? Yeah. Steep slopes. H2 states that development cannot create slopes greater than 30%, but we have now proposed to relax those rules. We would recommend adding to the end of that statement without an engineering plan if you want a positive financial plan. So what the design standard says is to the maximum extent feasible, development on steep slopes shall be designed to not create slopes greater than 30%. They're steeper than 30%, and all I would say is not to create slopes steeper than 30% without an engineering plan. It's already allowing for them, right? Well, so this goes try not to. Shall not create slopes, well, to that maximum extent feasible, but that's not the easiest one to work with. So the same rule comes in again for the reason we proposed to remove the prohibition was because of things like roadside ditches, which have a three to one slope. So as written right now, if you want to create a roadside ditch, you can't because you would create a 30% slope. And so what the proposal was actually from an engineer was that why don't you just go and give us without an engineering plan. So if you want to create some minor slopes that are 30%, we'll let you do it. Not create slopes deeper than 30% without an engineer plan. I'm not looking exactly how this is going to look, but you're telling us that it will still be a review process. It's not the engineer plan, it's the only. Correct. It's going to, yeah, there are 12 provisions in that design requirement, but one of which says you cannot create slopes steeper than 30%. To the maximum extent feasible. To the maximum extent feasible, but again. So now they could still do it, but yeah. At least in some ways, this is giving them a stronger requirement. Every time we rewrite a section, when Meredith and I rewrite a section, there will not be a maximum extent feasible because it's impossible. Yep. Because you know the extent feasible when you're reviewing it. Or, well, to the maximum extent feasible means you can also never deny an application. Right, right. Well, everyone go with staff recommendation on this last one. OK. All right, so make it through the yellow. Yeah, so we'll come back to the greens at the next meeting. It will be January 28, by the way. Do we want to have a situation where it's not to bring it up? Yes. Yes. Yes, there is one yellow we're going to revisit, which is 125. And number four. Oh, and number four. Technically number four, which some of you were here for, some of you weren't, which we will address at that time, which the question was, we were back to the definition of development on that one. And the issue of that one, which we never made a decision on was, if you had an unpaved surface and you wanted to pave it, do you need to get a zoning permit for it? And we just needed, as administrators, an answer to the question because we actually had somebody who had a six foot path and they wanted to take their six foot gravel path and make it a six foot paved path. And is that developed? Does it need to get a permit? And we just need to have an answer to that question. And so that's what number four was. And we really never, we kind of went around and around for four or five minutes. I don't want to think about it. And it was one of these ones I just needed an answer to. No answer wasn't an answer. We just needed to have some answer that would say, we had to pick one. Either yes, it was going to need a permit or no, it was not. I don't honestly care either way as long as I know what to tell somebody who comes in and asks. We'll have a quick show of hands. And if we get four of them, we've got one. And then numbers 56 or 130, they're going to be deemed approved unless comments are raised that the next meeting concerns are raised. OK. Next item on these and let's see. So talk about the memo that Kirby wrote, which was, well, why don't you talk about the intent of the memo? Did you write it? Sure. As I recall, I was asked at the last meeting to kind of put down the viewpoint of the entire group based on the votes we've had on these two issues. One is the issue of weather construction on slopes of 30% ever allowed. And we've all agreed that with an engineer plan and DRB approval, that it should be there, that it was too rigid. So the first section of the memo just explains that. And we had a consensus vote on it. I broke down the memo as I try to keep this as brief as possible to try to be friendly and convenient for the city council, most of all. So I just briefly put what the suggested changes, what our vote was, the background that I thought was most relevant. And then just to help them make decisions to sort of some bullet points, put the advantages and disadvantages of each. I'm not trying to make clear at the top that since we clear, in a situation where we voted to approve something, we felt the advantages of the disadvantages, just with them to be confused by us approving something and then pointing out the disadvantages, we're just trying to be transparent. The second issue, of course, the second major section of the memo is whether the is about building an area or whether we should use that. When calculating. No, I didn't use the word buildable area. When I stated the issue the first time, but that's what it's about. And now I need to tell you guys that, you know, we've discussed this quite a bit. And the last vote was 5-1. One factual clarification I need right now is for the September 10 vote, what exactly was that vote? I think I've changed the 4-1 because Kim was not here. Kim was not here. And 5-1 was after Kim was gone. Right. Right. OK. My most recent version has that, so I'll keep that. I've incorporated in this version in front of us, this is version 2, because I had one draft where I had Barb look at it because she had a lot of input into this issue and Mike. And I don't think the versions in front of you probably were linked to Mike. Mike had one change. Which I've done that in my most up-to-date copy. I've added some changes based on Barb's suggestions, but then Barb had some other larger suggestions to make to that second section. It was a point I could. Did you make changes after I sent you the email? I made changes after you sent the email. Because you said, I thought you said that you weren't going to have time to make those changes. I did say that originally, but then I had the thing open and I had your thoughts in my brain. So I said, you know what? I'm going to add in the things that are. OK. There was an email that said, update. Update, like 20 minutes later. Yeah, I can try to run through what I've changed already based on. Well, OK, because I ended up making changes. I edited it myself because I thought that you weren't going to have time. OK, well, then you can go ahead and go through those and if some of them may have already made changes. But it may make substantive changes that you may not agree with. Unfortunately, my printer does not print red. So these are, well, do you want to do it this way? Yeah, I'm sure that you want to do it this way. Let's first decide the scope of this memo before we go through all the edits, because I think that's something in flux right now based on the fact that Council already has the steep slope proposal in front of them. And that alone is not particularly controversial. It's more the buildable areas piece. So do we want to reframe the memo to just be addressing buildable areas and then submit that with this packet of proposed changes together? Is that reasonable to everybody? Sure, but why do we need to have a memo about the non controversial slopes of 30%? I guess I thought Kirby was writing the memo to reflect the sort of dissension. Everyone likes a good memo. I just got out of control starting to summarize up. That was the charge was to do both of those issues, because they were kind of related. OK, I mean, I'm fine with what I just said. I wasn't sure that we needed it. But we can drop it is exactly what I'm proposing right now. And what you're suggesting we do is drop the steep slopes from this memo. And we can refer to that for building on steep slopes. Building on steep slopes. And then we would hold this memo until the power goes. Yeah, well, I guess my question was, does Kirby need to write about anything that we bring to the council? I thought he was just writing this because about the second issue. Yeah, that's what we are deciding right now. Oh, OK. So you were already there, apparently. But yeah, they're interrelated. I'm hearing this just maybe even a question about the first part of this, whether we send a memo at all. Yeah, that was my question, I guess. I don't think we should. I think we should just cut that out. Is there any reason to think that? Because I work hard here. Sorry, dude. You put your hands up. I don't doubt that. I'm just kidding. Just knew you. I'm not kidding, Kirby. I know you don't doubt it. But I mean, do you think there's going to be more value to the council? It doesn't sound like it's controversial. I mean, I think I had just blended them in my mind. And steep slopes do need to be part of the discussion of the billable areas memo. But that doesn't mean that the vote about building on steep slopes needs to be presented. There's no harm in sending this though, right? Yeah, it's a separate memo, you think, Jack? There is if we send it now, because I'll probably spend two hours at the next council meeting talk about billable areas that is not actually on their agenda because we sent the memo to talk about it. He's just the first part. Just separating them. There's a few options here. So there's the option of not sending the memo at all. Just put that out there. I don't think we want to do that. There's the option of sending the memo as written, which it doesn't sound like that makes a lot of sense. It'll spend a lot of time from bikes spinning wheels over something that's not on the agenda. Is that our time? The third option is that we break these into two separate memos and send one now for the item that is on their agenda and hold the one that isn't until it is on their agenda. Another option is to just completely delete the section that talks about the first part of the memo that is with the steep slopes and then revise the second part of the memo, make that the only memo regarding billable area. Those are our four options. Those are our four options that I see them. You have to pick from one of the four, John. You can't make another one up. I mean, is anyone writing about the land? Are you going to write something about the landscaping, then? And just to me, it looks odd if Kirby's writing about it. Well, the reason why we decided that we should do that is because we weren't all on the same page when it came to billable area. And we had a vote. We re-voted. But Barb had some serious concerns. And we all agree that it made sense to advise the council of the drawbacks of going forward with this as a way to show we have a united front. We have, we did vote on this. We did discuss this. But some counselors, some commissioners, had some concerns. So this is a way to submit a memo to the council advising them that we acknowledge there are some concerns. The fifth option is that Mike just has this in his back pocket. If they're like, wouldn't it be nice to have a memo on it? As a separate memo or as a combined memo? As a separate memo. Oh, OK. Yeah, because the benefit of having the separate memo is that you may get comments from the public about this. Because I've already heard comments from the public. But about specifically the building on 30% slopes. So it might be helpful to have the position of the commission to present to the council. So we're not going to do no memo. That option's gone. That's what I'm hearing. We aren't going to submit the memo as is. John's the only one who seems to want it. No, I'm not. So then the question is, do we want to break it into two memos or do we want to drop? I mean, either we're breaking it into two or we're dropping cart. But there's a part there where we could officially send it to council as a separate memo or we could just provide it to Mike so that he can have as a document that's a resource, if in case it comes up. That's true. What's it? The first part of the memo that Kirby wrote. So in the short term, the next meeting, they're going to take up 30% slopes to greater destruction. And landscaping. And landscaping. But landscaping has been pretty non-controversial. I haven't had any public comments. So my question to you, Mike, is knowing what you know when you deal with the council, does the first part of this memo provide any insight that you think that the council would probably value when you make your presentation on the issue at the next meeting? They probably could get some value out of that in that they would be able to understand the unanimous support of the Planning Commission, why you made the decision that you did. And Kirby's put in the time to organize it. I think it could be pretty easily. I moved to put this into two. I just sent it. We've got a motion on the floor. OK. We're going to second. I'll second it. Any discussion? Do we want to? My only request in is that, on that issue of construction on slopes of 30% or greater, that we actually cite the section of the zoning ordinance, the section 307 steep slopes and 308 erosion control so that when the council gets it, they can open their zoning document and look right at it. OK. I know it will work. I said amendment Commissioner Connerway. Thank you. Any other discussion? OK. All those in favor, say aye. All those opposed, say nay. All those abstaining. And just to be clear, this vote, we are not sending the latter part of the memo. Correct. Correct. All right. I want to make that clear. I wasn't there in them. Understood. OK. So I'll modify it and give it to me and get it to council. OK. Motion carries. If I send memo, I meant you record it on Snapchat and then send it to the council. You're getting punchy. Yeah. OK. So minutes. Let's look at the minutes. So are we not going to discuss the other portion of the memo tonight, then? No. Let's hold up on that. Why don't you get your comments to Kirby or? Or review what Kirby? Yeah. I think at this point, since I've done this, I'd rather distribute it here, because we can't discuss it outside of this room. Right. So I would rather distribute it here, and then people can. OK. Why don't you distribute it? OK. So it's only going to be the next meeting. We'll look at the revised. Right. So it's not going to be the front page, because that was the piece that we just said would be. And everything that looks really light was added garbage. So and I have six copies. I could take it by email if you don't want to. Yeah, I just want to make sure that. OK. That's fine. I will send it by email as well, if you would prefer that. Do you want that? No, this is fine. OK. I mean, procedurally should I send it by email so that it becomes part of our record? Probably should at least send it to me. OK. All right. That's fine. OK. Before John leaves, do we have a let's turn to the minutes from December 10. One motion to approve these minutes. So moved. Second. Second. OK. John, any discussion? Can I just get a clarification on the last section of that, where it says review memos from Barb and Mike and finalize slopes changes? Consider motion to forward draft a council for consideration as an interim amendment. Again, we seem to be mixing the two. I don't know. Maybe it's clear enough. But now we're talking about two memos. Where? At the bottom. You're looking at December 10, right? Yeah. Yeah, at the bottom it says review memos from Barb and Mike and finalize slopes changes. Oh, from the bottom of the first page. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that was the title of the agenda item. OK. Oh, and then the bold is what was written. I could each written memos. Is the bold what was also written on the agenda? Consider motion to forward draft? Yes. That was on the agenda. OK. OK. So in the back, then the discussion was, again, this is the two, OK. All right, the proposal was to have Kirby. OK. Yeah, I think so, too. All right, the buildable area will be submitted later. The buildable area is section 3002. So the motion that section 3007, the steep slopes with the landscaping package be forwarded to. So where's the 5-1 vote that's referenced in the memo in the minutes? Now, it's not this time. It was a while back. OK, well, then the memo says December 2. There was a vote on December 10. Yeah, there was. This is the. I think that the motion passed on a 5-0 vote. It's the last line. That's what's recorded in the memo. Oh, I'm sorry, the 4-1. I'm sorry, you're talking about the 4-1 vote in the memo. That's practice of time. No, it says 5-1. And I guess I thought. I think there was a motion. I don't think it ended up here because it ended up being withdrawn because what we ended up with was chasing ourselves around. And we ended up with a 5-1 vote. It says 5-0 here, though. But we had a 5-1 vote. And then we had to try to figure out how we were going to send a memo forward. And then after the 5-1 vote, I made a recommendation that rather than waiting until then the discussion was maybe we'll meet to talk about the memo. And I said, at this meeting or the next meeting, I was like, why don't we just move forward? Oh, so this is about the landscaping. Yeah, why don't we just move forward with what we all agree on, and then we decided to amend it to only send the steep slopes and landscaping because we all agree on the steep slopes. We all agree on landscaping. We build Blurry for later. And we passed a new motion at 5-0. So that was the motion was to move forward with the building on steep slopes? Yes. Yeah, I thought so, too. I knew we separated them, but I thought we voted on Bill LaFleur. I think there was a vote. Yes. But that wasn't in December 10th. That was previously. It was at both times. No, it was December 10th. So I think you're so much in your mouth. So there were two motions. I think there was a motion. Where's the 5-1 before us? I might have to go and check. Do we want to just table these until the next meeting? OK. I'll table these and review the video. But I think there was one motion that was in there that maybe was possible. OK. All right. Cable and review. OK. Thank you, Jared. John. Factory motion. John. Good. John, do I have a second? I second. This is a non-debatable motion. All those in favor, say aye. All those opposed? OK. And we are adjourned. Thanks, everyone. Next meeting is January 28th.